Going where no other company has dared: Green Opera gives the stage premiere of Joubert’s Jane Eyre in a full-blooded performance at Grimeborn Festival

Joubert: Jane Eyre – Laura Mekhail (Jane) – Green Opera at Grimeborn Festival, Arcola Theatre – (Photo: Camilla Greenwell)

John Joubert: Jane Eyre; Laura Mekhail, Hector Bloggs, Lawrence Thackeray, Alexander Semple, director Eleanor Burke, conductor Kenneth Woods, Green Opera; Grimeborn Festival at Arcola Theatre
Reviewed 8 August 2025

Amazingly, the stage premiere of Joubert’s final opera, a work which has tantalised for decades. Here receiving an admirably full-blooded performance

Composer John Joubert wrote eight works for the stage and if you had asked him, evidently he would evidently have said his best opera was Under Western Eyes from 1968. But his final opera, Jane Eyre, written without commission from 1987 to 1997, remained a tantalising possibility. Never fully staged in the composer’s lifetime, for his 90th birthday, Kenneth Woods conducted a concert performance with the English Symphony Orchestra and this was issued on disc by SOMM in 2017 [see my review]. Now Woods has had the chance to conduct a full staging.

Green Opera in collaboration with the Grimeborn Festival at the Arcola Theatre presented a new staging of John Joubert’s Jane Eyre at the Arcola Theatre. We caught the performance on Friday 8 August 2026 with Laura Mekhail as Jane, Hector Bloggs as Rochester, Lawrence Thackeray as Richard Mason and St John Rivers, plus Anna Sideris, Emily Hodkinson, Alexander Semple, Chris Murphy and Steffi Fashokun. The production was directed by Eleanor Burke with designs by Emeline Beroud and movement by Alex Gotch. Kenneth Woods conducted an instrumental ensemble of eight playing an arrangement of the score by Thomas Ang.

Joubert: Jane Eyre – In the Rivers’ household: Anna Sideris (Diana), Laura Mekhail (Jane), Emily Hodkinson (Mary), Lawrence Thackeray (St John) – Green Opera at Grimeborn Festival, Arcola Theatre – (Photo: Camilla Greenwell)

The libretto is by the Richard Strauss scholar, Kenneth Birkin who was a PhD student of John Joubert at the University of Birmingham. Originally the opera was in three acts, but with the prospect of the 2016 performance which would lead to the recording, Joubert revised the opera. He removed secondary scenes and orchestral interludes, material from which would find its way into his third symphony. The resulting opera has just two hours of music, and a great deal of plot to get through.

Act One opens with Jane about to leave Lowood School. Scenes at Thornfield follow ending with a love duet for Jane and Rochester. Act Two opens with the interrupted wedding, followed by a scene at the Rivers and the final scene with Jane returning to Thornfield. 

The opening scene had to establish a great deal of back history and whilst the character of Brocklehurst (Alexander Semple) was admirably sketched you wondered how much of this was necessary, given that Jane (Laura Mekhail) had to present much expository detail. Perhaps Birkin loved the book a bit too much, the language of the libretto is somewhat stilted, too close to Charlotte Bronte for operatic comfort and you rather needed those surtitles. The scenes at Thornfield failed to establish much background and we needed a lot more. By the end of Act One, when Jane and Rochester had declared their love, I began to wonder whether you would make any sense of the drama if you had not read the original novel. Certainly, the scene at the Rivers household in Act Two lasted around 15 minutes and offered little time to establish characters. 

Joubert wrote in an expansive, late romantic style with the music for Jane and Rochester full blooded and open hearted. And he gave their scenes plenty of space, which of course meant that the rest of the plot had to whistle past. At the moment the opera has too many smaller characters who either appear very briefly or seem to play little part at all. The programme book listed 12 singing characters, plus Steffi Fashokun in the silent role of Rochester’s first wife, Berthe Mason.

Eleanor Burke seems to have made the decision to assume that we did know the book. Before a word was sung, Steffi Fashokun was presented as Berthe and throughout the first act she was strong presence despite the fact that the presence of Berthe in the attic was not explained until Act Two. This felt like a dramatic device introduced by Burke as an admission that the dramaturgy of the opera does not quite work.

That said, the performances by the two leads, Laura Mekhail and Hector Bloggs were both full blooded and engaging. Mekhail brought a contained intensity to Jane, making you remember that in the book the character is fierce with sharp edges. Mekhail’s voice is lyric but she revealed enough underlying strength to make the big scenes work. The opera really requires a soprano who can power through and make Jane’s music soar and Mekhail made a fine attempt in the small space of the Arcola Theatre Studio. She was well partnered by Hector Bloggs, who revealed a fine romantic baritone even if his stage presence was a bit stiff. This Rochester did not quite brood enough, but Bloggs made up with his vocal quality.

Around them were a series of powerful character singers who all made their seconds in the limelight really count. Anna Sideris was poignant as the school pupil bidding farewell to Jane in the opening scene. Underused as Rochester’s love-interest in the rest of Act One she managed to sharply etch St John Rivers’ sister with Emily Hodkinson as the other sister. Elsewhere, Hodkinson was wasted as the housekeeper Mrs Fairfax is a non-presence here, alas. 

Lawrence Thackeray managed to make both Richard Mason (at the aborted wedding) and St John Rivers’ count, which is no mean feat given the small amount of stage time Joubert allots these characters. Alexander Semple, however, was dealt a stronger hand. Not only did he present us with a strong portrait of the vicious Brocklehurst at Lowood School but he made a vivid Mason the solicitor who interrupts the wedding. Chris Murphy did little but recite the wedding service but did it well.

Steffi Fashokun gave an admirably expressive performance as Berthe without ever overcoming the feeling that she was taking over an opera where her presence was not the primary concern. Certainly, Bronte’s Jane Eyre treats Berthe very badly, but introducing her as a larger character than Joubert and Birkin intended does not solve things. What we really needed was Joubert’s opera to be performed in a season with a stage adaptation of Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea which forms a ‘postcolonial and feminist prequel’ to Jane Eyre. In fact Rhys’ novel was adapted into a chamber opera in 1997 by Australian composer Brian Howard.

Joubert: Jane Eyre – Lowood School: Laura Mekhail (Jane), Alexander Semple (Brockhurst) – Green Opera at Grimeborn Festival, Arcola Theatre – (Photo: Camilla Greenwell)

The results, here, were admirably full blooded and, despite the reduced orchestration, at times a bit much for the studio. I still long to hear the work staged with full orchestra and the right sort of spinto soprano as Jane. Seen on stage for the first time, Joubert’s Jane Eyre remains somewhat problematic but with two such fine lead roles you do hope that another company leaps forward to give the work the full staging it deserves. Until then, we must applaud Green Opera and Arcola Theatre for going where no other company has dared.